Le Mans preparations continue, despite the event still being over 5 months away!  I thought the whole experience was amazing when I last went in 2011, and vowed to do it bigger and better next time!  Taking the caravan in 2014 will give us a huge amount of comfort compared to using a tent, and as I have said in numerous previous posts, I plan to provide us with satellite TV to watch the race from camp, as well as all sorts of other comforts such as a couple of gas fridges to cool beer, and 240v power (for the TV and satellite kit). (and of course a hot shower, toilet, gas BBQ, stove, hot water, and all the usual caravan goodies!)

As there is no electric hookup in the camping area we are staying on, We will need to run the caravan systems (water, lights, fridges etc.) on gas and 12v. I will also have 240v available via my home-brew power pack. As we are in France for 5 nights, we need a few batteries for contingency. Should the caravan battery go flat, I will need a spare, and should the battery in the power pack go flat, that too will need a spare. Charging mobile phones etc will demand an amount of power during the event, so I plan to use a dedicated battery for this, to preserve both the caravan battery, and the battery in the power pack.

To facilitate all of this, I have obtained a second high power car battery. I got my hands on a Bosch 100ah battery today, which is currently undergoing a maintenance charge. The other spare is from my BMW, as I replaced the battery a few months ago. Ordinarily, you would want a dedicated deep cycle leisure battery for a caravan (and my power pack as a leisure battery in it too) but car batteries will do just fine as backups. These batteries are past their best, but I expect that they will still serve us well, should we need to rely on them. After all, I don’t plan to take a generator.

With these x2 spares, the primary caravan battery, and my power pack, we should be well covered!

Another satellite based post this evening, anybody would think this was a blog dedicated to broadcasting based on my posts of late, but that isn’t the case!

I just want to dispel a myth; many people believe that a Sky UK viewing card can only be used in the Sky box it is registered to, and to use it in another box would mean a call to customer services to pair the card to the new box serial number. THIS IS NOT THE CASE (entirely).

A Sky viewing card can be used in any Sky digital box to view the majority of standard Sky channels. It is true however, that the card must be paired to the box to be able to view the Sky Movies and Sky Sports channels. Most channels work without this pairing though, including Eurosport.

If you plan to travel with a spare Sky box, or plan to visit a holiday home in the UK or abroad, or a friend etc, where there is a Sky box, you can take your card with you to view the main subscription, and free to air channels.

You may notice that in an unpaired box, some channels are at the wrong number. For example when I tested this, BBC Two was oddly not present in it’s usual EPG slot, but was available further down the listings.

Merry Christmas everybody. Santa is about to enter British airspace, so it’s time for bed !

Have a good one!!

I bought a 60cm satellite dish on ebay to use in the caravan. It arrived today, so as I had a day off work, I thought I would have a play with it, as I have also recently bought a cheap FTA receiver and a satellite finder. The dish was only around £15, and £6 for the LNB. The receiver was £21 and the finder was £6. The finder makes a squeal when a signal is detected, and a needle moves to give a visual signal. The dish is very leightweight, and is made of some thin metal. The aluminium LNB arm comes off, so it can be stored relatively flat. The dish will clamp to a pole, which is handy, as it should fit on the jockey wheel of the van.

I clamped the dish to the bird table for testing, and almost instantly found a spot where the squeak from the detector went ultra high. As the dish was pointing a little to the right compared to my house dish, I assumed this was 19.2E (Astra1) which was what I wanted.

I went indoors and did a full scan on all transponders, and sure enough, loads of german and other foreign channels were found. In amongst them, Eurosport Germany, as I had hoped.

I found several English language channels , including BBC world news, so I added these, along with Eurosport, as favourite channels.

The great thing about this box is that it will show you an onscreen signal graph when you press “info”, and also when you plug it in, it will go to the last channel it was tuned to. Next time I turn this receiver on (when I am at Le Mans) it will tune to Eurosport Germany, and pressing “info” will show the signal strength, making alignment even easier!

I have a little basic Freesat box too, for UK only channels, so I plan to leave this FTA receiver programmed to the 19.2E channels, and when I want to watch UK TV, I can switch to the Freesat box, and swing the dish left a little to Astra2, rather than re-scan and risk loosing the FTA Eurosport.

Should be great for Le Mans!

I thought I’d write a quick information post, in case anybody is interested in receiving Eurosport for free, either in the UK or Europe. There is a caveat here, and that is that the only version of Eurosport that is free to air carries a German soundtrack.

Why would anybody care you might ask?  As you may have read in previous posts, I am planning a trip to Le Mans in 2014, and myself and some friends are taking a caravan. I plan to have a number of comforts during the 5 or 6 days we are there (shower, hot water, 240 volt electricity, etc.) and one of the things I am keen to get working is the TV, if only for the technical pleasure!

I have an LED TV in the caravan which can run on either 12v or 240v, and it has a digital terrestrial receiver in it. I plan to play around with this when we set-up camp, to see what French channels I can receive (if any). I also have a small satellite dish, and a couple of basic satellite receivers, and I am particularly interested in getting these working, either to receive British TV (via Freesat) or, as the title of this post suggests, to receive Eurosport for fee.

Receiving Eurosport is particularly relevant at Le Mans, as during the 24 hour race, and qualifying, coverage will be available on this channel, and therefore it would be cool to be able to receive this whilst at camp ! One of my two satellite receivers is a true Free to Air model, meaning it should pick-up anything, from any satellite, that isn’t encrypted. The Freesat receiver may also work, but Freesat receivers tend to only receive the Freesat channels, as they are designed specifically for that platform. With the little satellite finder I just bougt on ebay, I hope to be able to find the two satellites relevant to this task; Astra 1, at 19.2E, and the UK Astra satellite (Sky and Freesat) at 28.2E.

If I can receive a signal at 19.2E with my FTA box, I should pull in hundreds of foreign channels, one of which will be Eurosport Germany. The plan is to simply mute the volume on the TV and play the trackside commentary on my Roberts FM radio, via Radio Le Mans.

Switching the dish to 28.2E (and switching to the Freesat box) will get us British TV. In this region of France, we should be able to get all the channels, as if the box was sat in my house here in the UK.

I plan to pre-scan the FTA box at 19.2E at home prior to the trip, and hopefully set Eurosport Germany to channel 1, so that I can easily move the dish around on the camp site and find the channel, without having to re-scan over in France. When the weather warms up I may go into the garden and swivel my dish to 19.2E and see how easy the satellite finder is to use!

An alternative to using Eurosport in German is simply to point the dish at 28.2E (for UK TV) and bring a UK Sky box with a valid subscription, as that would provide domestic TV, AND Eurosport 1 and 2 in English, and would save switching between 19.2E and 28.2E constantly. This is the best solution, obviously, but would require somebody to be kind enough to lend me a sky box and card for the trip, as I’m not a Sky customer!

UPDATE:  I have recently learned that to view Eurosport via Sky UK, any Sky digital box will work, so long as there is a valid card inserted. I have always been under the impression that the paired card and box must be inserted, but this is not the case. – See later post for details

After some initial testing on the satellite platforms, and place holders in the guides of Freeview and Youview customers for some weeks, the BBC have finally launched the 5 HD channels which were yet to switch from SD. These are;

BBC Three HD

BBC Four HD

CBBC HD

CBeebies HD

BBC News HD

Freesat, Virgin Media and Sky customers will get all of the channels immediately(already live at the time of writing) but for viewers of terrestrial TV (YouView and Freeview) the picture is a little different….

All terrestrial viewers with HD capable equipment will receive BBC Three HD and CBBC HD, as these channels are broadcast on the existing national HD multiplex. CBeebies HD, BBC Four HD and BBC News HD (as well as an HD news service from Al-Jazeera) will be broadcast using a brand new HD multiplex, which uses airspace cleared by the analogue switch-off. This new multiplex needs to be enabled at each of the national transmitter stations, and this will take time. 50% of the country will receive these new channels today, but another 30 – 40% (me included) will need to wait for their local transmitter to be upgraded in early 2014.

Activation dates can be found here

It has been announced today by the government that the UK task disc,  which has been with us since 1920, it to be abolished in late 2014 in favour of an entirely electronic system. 

There will be an option to pay by card on line, at a post-office, or monthly by direct debit, under the new scheme. There will be no physical item to be display in our car windows.

I am in favour of the scheme, which I have thought was antiquated for years. I certainly wont miss the annual ritual of going to the post office, trying to tear the perforated disc from the paper, and leaning over to the passenger side of the car to try and fit the disc into a wallet stuck to the windscreen!

Spreading the payments over the year by direct debit is also going to be useful, after all we do tend to budget in this way. I am disappointed to read that there will be a 5% premium for this facility however.